In private, Obama and Boehner tangle

President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner split over the contentious issue of lifting the nation’s debt limit during a private White House meeting Wednesday that illustrates the rough road ahead in dealing with the nation’s festering fiscal ills.

In the meeting – a day after a high-profile speech by Boehner in which he called for spending cuts paired with any future debt-ceiling hikes — the speaker told the president that “I’m not going to allow a debt ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt,” according to the Ohio Republican’s aides.

Story Continued Below

As they lunched on takeout sandwiches from Washington’s Taylor Gourmet, Boehner, who said Tuesday he’s ready to start the debate over the debt before the November elections, asked Obama whether he wanted a debt-limit increase without spending cuts, and Obama responded “yes,” according to Boehner’s aides.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) – who along with Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were at the White House lunch — disputed that characterization in a later news conference, saying Obama’s view was that a debt deal would have to include both cuts and revenues.

“If you go on the path that the speaker is suggesting, that any lifting of the debt ceiling has to have more cuts than the lifting of the debt ceiling, we will soon have no government,” Pelosi said.

On Boehner’s demands, White House press secretary Jay Carney said: “It is simply not acceptable to hold the American and global economy hostage.” Obama, Carney said, would insist on a “balanced approach” – meaning a mix of revenue raisers and spending cuts.

“The president made clear…that we’re not going to recreate the debt ceiling debacle of last August,” Carney said. “It is the responsibility of Congress to ensure that America pays its bills.”

In the meeting, Reid also disagreed with Boehner that Congress should restart the debt debate right away, saying lawmakers should wait until they determine what to do with the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to take place in January, as well as what to do with the Bush-era tax cuts that expire at year’s end.

“Senator Reid thought it was unfortunate to see Republican leaders engaging in the same kind of brinksmanship that led to a slump in economic confidence and a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating last year,” explained a senior Democratic aide.

Reid also reiterated in the meeting that the $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts – formally called a sequester – would take effect unless Congress produced a new budget agreement that included both new revenues and spending cuts, according to the aide.

Wednesday’s meeting had been initially scheduled to discuss Obama’s “to-do” list for Congress, but the congressional leaders brought up a host of other issues that have been dominating Capitol Hill in recent weeks.

For instance, McConnell discussed how to prevent the scheduled increase in federal student loan interest rates, according to his spokesman, Don Stewart. And Boehner also raised the issue of the Keystone XL pipeline and Operation Fast and Furious, an ill-fated gun-tracing operation led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.